With the polar vortex centered directly over Asia 2016-2017 winter, snow and cold records are already being set. Snowbrains calling for record snow in Japan due to La Nina and record cold across central Asia and China. I myself am calling snow in downtown Taipei 2017 winter.

BRITAIN is facing the heaviest snowfalls in years this winter as the country’s first icy blast arrives in SIX WEEKS unleashing FOUR MONTHS of heavy snow and sub-zero temperatures, forecasters have announced.

Thermometers are about to plunge amid predictions of crippling snowstorms and major whiteouts lasting into February.

Experts warn to expect a very “exciting” December even hinting at the possibility of a White Christmas this year.

After several mild and wet winters 2016 will buck the trend with the UK now facing the coldest and snowiest for at least six years. Continue reading »

Worst snowfall in 30 years – up to 4½ meters (14 ft) in the mountains.

4 June 2016 – According to Government Secretary of the Department of Las Heras, Raul Villafane, the area involved is from Uspallata to the tunnel mouth, where more than 10 thousand people are affected.

Uspallata, Polvaredas, Punta de Vacas, Mundo Perdido (Lost World), Penitentes, Puente del Inca and Las Cuevas, are all towns that under the snow.

The nívea (snow) accumulation ranges from 35 cm to 4½ meters in Las Cuevas, said Villafane. It has been 30 years since it snowed so much. Continue reading »

Hundreds of thousands of farm animals have perished in a slow-moving natural disaster in Mongolia and the international aid response has been insufficient, the Red Cross said Friday.

Mongolia has been hit by a devastating natural phenomenon known as a “dzud”, said the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) — a hot summer drought followed by a severe winter.

The combination spells doom for livestock in a country where IFRC said a third of the thinly-spread population rely on animal husbandry for their livelihoods.

Goats, sheep and cows die en masse, unable to graze sufficiently in the warmer months to build up the reserves necessary to withstand later temperatures that regularly drop to -50 degrees Celsius.

More than 350,000 animals have already died, but more than a million deaths are expected, according to the latest available data from the UN mission in the country, IFRC said. Continue reading »

“I am tall but the snow reached up to my waist.”
5 Feb 2016 – All schools are closed in Patreksfjörður in the West Fjords due to heavy snowfall last night. An avalanche alert is still on in the small town. “We’re totally snowed in,” says director of the town council Ásthildur Sturludóttir. “I am tall but the snow reached up to my waist.” Continue reading »

Farmers in Sa Pa District, where the temperature dropped to minus 4.2 degrees Celsius on Sunday afternoon, said snow is falling at “a sensitive” time.

Many hope to sell vegetables grown on hundreds of hectares and chickens and buffaloes for Tet, the country’s most important festival, which comes in two weeks’ time.

But according to official statistics, snow has caused losses of more than VND2.3 billion ($103,500) to the district’s farmers after affecting more than 170 hectares of vegetable fields and killing five calves.

Dinh Viet Phuong, a vegetable farmer, estimated his loss at at least VND50 million (US2,250) since his vegetable garden is buried under snow and has little chance of survival.

“We’ve lost Tet.”

The cold snap in northern Vietnam is considered the worst in decades, bringing snow even to Ba Vi mountain near Hanoi, which is a mere 1,281 meters (4,200 feet) tall.

Okinawa, a Japanese island inside the tropics, has been engulfed by a wave of cold.

The largest island in the Ryukyu chain is used to a steady 19 degrees Celsius on a winter day and 14C by night – cold enough for a jacket. A maximum of 10C and minimum of 6C needs more than a jacket and these were Sunday’s temperatures, in the rain.

Okinawa is not used to snow, but 100 metres up on the hill snow fell and the temperature dropped to -5C. Rare though snow is, it is not unprecedented: occasional plunges of Arctic air produced snow in Okinawa in 1952, 1964 and 1977.

In northern Vietnam, where mountain farmers are used to 11C in the winter, snow now covers the vegetables growing on the terraces. The same wave of cold air that swept through China arrived in Vietnam on Sunday and Sa Pa, in Lao Cai province, felt a sudden drop in temperature. Continue reading »

With the exception of a handful of one-time events, it had been such a mild winter across most of the U.S. that numerous retailers have been complaining how negatively impacted their topline has been as a result of the warmer weather (clearly having forgotten how they complained about precisely the opposite in prior years).

All that is about to change, and all those warm weather-slammed retailers are about to get just the top line-boosting gift they have been waiting for because according to AccuWeather, the Northeast – from Charleston all the way to Boston – is about to be hit with a major winter storm, with the potential for heavy snow to impact more than 50 million people at the end of the week. Continue reading »

“We have heavy snow in İstanbul and other cities of Turkey,” says reader Caner Demir.
Hundreds of flights in and out of Turkey were canceled at Istanbul’s two airports after the city was blanketed by heavy snow

“While they talk about nothing but warm temperatures in New York, cropping the maps so you can’t see the cold, they don’t mention that it’s snowing south of the Rio Grande in MEXICO out west,” says Ryan.

As of 8 pm Sunday night, Dec 27, it was 28 F and headed for a low of 17 F in Chihuahua.